Oregon Explorer Team
Front row: Andrea Wirth, Renee Davis-Born, Marc Rempel, Tim Fiez, Janine Salwasser
Back row: Bonnie Avery, Kuuipo Walsh, Gail Achterman, Jimmy Kagan, John Pollitz, Larry Landis, Jeremy Frumkin, Karyle Butcher
Not shown: Ruth Vondracek, Janet Webster, and Sue Kunda

Vision

The Oregon Explorer is envisioned to use the power of today’s cutting edge information technology to create a state-of-the-art web-accessible natural resources digital library by way of accessing and integrating data from state and federal agencies, local governments, university scientists and citizens to support informed decisions and actions by people concerned with Oregon’s natural resources and environment.

Goals

• Be Oregon’s “go to” place for natural resources information
• Enable users to quickly find, retrieve, integrate and synthesize geo-referenced and well-organized natural resource and environmental information and access experts through a web portal.
• Develop customized data products and tools to provide decision support, streamline environmental permitting and target investments in order to improve natural resource and environmental management in the public and private sectors.
• Develop a statewide environmental assessment framework and apply it at recurring intervals as part of an overall statewide sustainability strategy.
• Empower users to share their information with others in order to create and build shared understanding about Oregon’s natural resource and environmental issues, problems and opportunities and build community networks.

Objectives

• Build a distributed network linking disparate users and encouraging them to publish on the Oregon Explorer.
• Assure value-free, neutral information with clear labeling of data quality allowing user evaluation of information quality.
• Provide search tools that enable searching across collections, inside and outside existing libraries, including spatial and non-spatial information.
• Allow integration and synthesis of varied types of information including digital documents, maps, computer models, data bases, photographs, video and audio and satellite imagery.
• Recover and digitize legacy data and literature from resource management agencies.

Targeted Users: natural resource decision-makers and practitioners. 

However, we also want the Oregon Explorer to be useful to researchers and scientists, educators and students, and interested citizens for addressing natural resource issues at a variety of geographic scales.

The Oregon Explorer site was made public in June of 2007.

Oregon Explorer Team:

• Gail Achterman, Director, OUS Institute for Natural Resources

• Bonnie Avery, OSU Libraries, Natural Resources Digital Collections Librarian

• Karyle Butcher, University Librarian, OSU Libraries

• Jimmy Kagan, INR, Information Office Director

• Sue Kunda, OSU Libraries, Digital Production Librarian

• Larry Landis, OSU Libraries, University Archivist

• Marc Rempel, OSU Libraries, Programmer and GIS analyst
  

• Janine Salwasser, OSU Libraries, Natural Resource Digital Library Program Director

• Ruth Vondracek, OSU Libraries, Head of Reference Consulting & Innovative Services

• Kuuipo Walsh, INR, Project Manager andGIS Analyst

• Janet Webster, OSU Libraries, Department Head Guin Library

• Andrea Wirth, OSU Libraries, Geosciences and Environmental Sciences Librarian

Acknowledgements 

Funding for Phase 1 development of the Oregon Explorer was provided through a grant from the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board and matched with OSU Library and INR funds.